The most surprising films of the year in Gijon's third edition of the Special Competition Rellumes

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Special Selection Rellumes' third edition opens the doors of the competition to the most unusual movies of this year.

49th Gijon Film Festival offers its audience (that will vote the winner) ten different sights that examine the international cinematographic panorama, a group of titles that rise as a parallel Official Selection, taking as an example Cannes' Quinzaine des Réalisateurs and Venice's Orizzonti Section.

Rellumes selection gives a twist to conventional subjects finding in them an unusual freshness from remote cinema such as Congo, Australia or Thailand, or films that support the strong push from the East, with movies such as Avé, Eighty Letters and Punk's Not Dead. This section also shows the work of promising young European directors as Celine Sciamma or Jessica Krummacher, and a master as Aleksey Balabanov. Gijon will present his latest film The Stoker. Spanish cinematography will be represented by the documentary Hollywood Talkies directed by Óscar Pérez and Mía de Ribot.

Hollywood Talkies is a documentary emerged from Pompeu Fabra University Creation Documentation Master. Produced by Luis Miñarro (winner of Palma D'Or at Cannes 2010), was presented in Venice and the story of the Spanish actors that fled to Hollywood in the 30's to star in our language versions of films that were made in the States, returning years later, almost unnoticed, to a country immersed in a Civil War.

Aleksey Balabanov (Yekateringburg, Russia, 1959) won the Best Director Award in 45th Gijon Film Festival with the rough Cargo 200 and he was honoured in the 47th with a retrospective that became a success that year. The director now returns to Gijón to compete with his latest film, The Stoker, violent and disturbing insight into the disintegration of the USSR through the life of a retired veteran of Afghanistan that is now responsible for maintaining the boiler of an old building in St. Petersburg which is also the home incinerator of a mobster. The movie arrives to the festival after a roundabout in Rotterdam and the GoEast Awards in which it received two prizes, it was also nominated in several categories at the Russian Cinema Nika Awards.

The vigour of the new Eastern cinema is also present in this year's edition with titles such as Eighty Letters, by Vaclav Kadrnka (Zlín, Czech Republic, 1973), a film that has passed through Berlin and Karlovy Vary, and was a great success in Finále Festival. The director uses his own sources to shoot this 80's atmosphere realistic portrait: the correspondence exchanged between his parents when his father moved to the UK to work, and the difficulties a young Vaclav had to overcome until the family had the chance to get back together.

Vladimir Blazevski (Skopje, 1955) comes to Gijon for the first time with Punk's Not Dead, Macedonian Oscar Foreign Language Nominated Feature and winner in the last edition of Karlovy Vary. This black comedy shows the efforts of an old punk to get the old band together for a last concert.

From Bulgaria, Konstantin Bojanov first feature film, Avé, discovered at Semaine de la Critique in Cannes and winner of Sarajevo's Special Jury Award. Set in Bulgaria, in this accidental crush road movie the director gets in the way of the manipulative Ave, a 17 years old runaway, an impressionable hitchhiker teen.

The competition will also host the latest film from one of the strongest promises of French cinema: Céline Sciamma (Pontoise, France, 1980), co-writer of Ivory Tower, widely applauded in Rellumes last year. The director, Cesar Prize nominee for her debut film Naissance des pieuvres, was recognized with the Jury's Teddy Award at Berlin with Tomboy. This term refers to girls, children and teenagers, who like to behave like boys, in the film Sciamma goes father in the way opened by Hilary Swank's Boys Don't Cry, Best Actress in Gijon in addition to the Oscar.

Rellumes also welcomes another promising young European moviemaker, Jessica Krummacher and her first feature Totem, participant in the Critic's Week in Venice. Following the lines drawn by directors such as Michael Haneke or Harmony Korine, the German director portrays the routine of a Ruhr eccentric family through the eyes of their new maid.

And if the new cinematography from the East is hitting hard on the international film festivals, the other continents are not left behind. An example of this is the movie Viva Riva!, by Djo Tunda Wa Munga, the first production of the Demotratic Republic of Congo, which alter getting the critics acclaim in Berlin, BAFICI and Toronto, won six African Academy Awards and an MTV Movie Award. Djo Tunda's debut, the only film producer from Kinshasa, is an exciting feature about the underworld of the Congolose capital, with a powerful soundtrack featuring tradicional and avant-garde electronic local sounds.

From the gangsters in Kinshasa to an Aboriginal community in New South Wales, gamilaroi blooded Australian director Ivan Sen (Queensland, 1972), awarded in Berlin and Clermont-Ferrand, presents in Gijon Film Festival the movie Toomelah. Selected in Cannes section Un Certain Regard de Cannes, this film tells the store of a ten year old boy living in an isolated reserve who aspires to join the local mafia.

From Thailand Gijon programmesKongdej Jaturanrasmeeapplauded P-047, one of the best Asian films of this year that after being present in the Orizzonti Section in Venice is becoming a cult phenomenon. The story is full of narrative twists in which the director proposes a reflection about the power of imagination. Two characters slip into people's houses to borrow their lives for a few hours and build the truth with pieces of memory.